In Redwood City officer-involved shooting civil trial, a day of testimony and tears

OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — Witness testimony began Wednesday in the civil trial of a case centered on a Redwood City police officer-involved shooting and subsequent death of a man after his wife called 911 while he was experiencing a mental health crisis.

On Dec. 10. 2018, at approximately 8 a.m., two Redwood City police officers, Roman Gomez and Leila Velez arrived at the Hart residence while Kristin Hart was still on the phone with dispatch explaining that her husband was harming himself with a knife in an attempt to end his life.

After seeing Kristin Hart in the front yard of her home with her shirt covered in Kyle Hart’s blood from self-inflicted knife wounds, Gomez told Velez for her to be “less lethal” and he would be “lethal,” meaning she would use a Taser, and he drew his gun as the approached the man, who was holding a knife in his back yard.

Gomez fired five shots, and shot Kyle Hart three times, according to the wrongful death lawsuit Kristin Hart filed in 2021.

In U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ courtroom on Wednesday, nine jurors and around 20 audience members heard the testimony of the first witness, Dr. Lornie Phillips, a trauma surgeon who reviewed the pathology and autopsy reports after Kyle Hart’s death. Phillips, who was called by the plaintiff’s attorney Benjamin Nisenbaum, works at Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley and said he is commonly asked to provide expert testimony. In Kyle Hart’s case, Phillips said the self-inflicted injuries, including the complete severing of the external jugular vein, were not his cause of death.

Instead, Phillips said, it was the hemorrhagic bleeding from a gunshot wound to his aorta, the main artery of the human body and crucial to a functioning heart, that caused Kyle Hart’s death.

Phillips explained Kyle Hart’s self-inflicted wounds to his neck and arms would not have killed him if pressure was applied to them in a timely manner. In order to stay in the standing position Kyle Hart was in when the police arrived, Phillips said, he could not have experienced significant blood loss.

“What’s interesting about suicide is that a lot of people don’t know how to do it,” Phillips said based on his experience as a doctor in a trauma center and seeing numerous patients with mental health issues, noting many people who attempt to die by suicide don’t cut deep enough into an artery.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Kevin Gilbert asked Phillips if someone could survive if their trachea was damaged and questioned how he could assess the injuries without seeing autopsy photos.

“I don’t need pictures to know if someone can breathe,” Phillips said.

The jurors also heard testimony from Gomez about his training, including how to deescalate situations that include mentally unwell people, and what happened after he arrived at the Hart home. Nisenbaum and Gilbert showed different views of the front and back yards of the house, and where the officers were standing in relation to Kyle Hart.

Gomez and Velez never communicated with Kristin Hart while on the scene and did not have a conversation with Kyle Hart before he was shot. Once Gomez reached the back yard, he said Kyle Hart turned around about 30 feet from him, and Gomez shouted “drop the knife” a few times. According to Gomez, Kyle started running toward him with an eight-inch butcher knife held near his side. Gomez fired five rounds, while Velez deployed the Taser “almost simultaneously.” Kyle was shot three times within five seconds of Gomez seeing Kyle, according to his testimony.

Gomez frequently asked both attorneys to repeat their questions and got choked up when answering Gilbert’s question: “Why did you use lethal force?”

“You don’t have that luxury to sit back and come up with a huge plan,” Gomez said. “He advances on us quickly and raises the knife. I was in fear of my life and in fear of my partner’s life.”

Kristin Hart was the final witness Wednesday. Nisenbaum questioned her about how she met her husband and what their family life was like. Three days before her husband died, Kristin gave birth to their daughter. They also had a two-and-a-half-year-old son who was in the house at the time of the shooting. Nisenbaum asked if Kyle ever had any suicidal ideation or spoke of the future.

“He was a great dad,” Kristin Hart said through tears. “He was very excited to have a daughter, he came from a family of boys.”

When she first saw her husband in the kitchen the morning of Dec. 10, she said she saw him cutting his arms with a small blade and was in “complete shock and horror.”

She told him to stop, she said, and grabbed paper towels to stop his bleeding. At one point, she said she cried, “I need a phone!” and he handed her his phone out of his pocket. It was the only time during the incident, she said, that he responded to what she was saying. Soon after, he grabbed the butcher knife and moved into the back yard, according to her testimony.

The courtroom heard the audio of Kristin Hart’s 911 call. In it she screams, “Kyle put the knife down” several times. A few people in the audience were visibly shaken to hear the 911 exchange.

“I felt immense relief,” she said referring to when she heard the sirens of the police cars. “Because I thought they were coming to help.”

In 2024, the case was argued in the Ninth Circuit, on the issues of the use of deadly force and qualified immunity. The three-judge panel reversed the district court judge’s summary judgment denial of qualified immunity regarding Gomez.

Kristin Hart, along with her children as successors to Kyle Hart, are seeking wrongful death damages against the city of Redwood, Gomez, Velez, and Dan Mulholland, Redwood City’s chief of police. Additionally, the plaintiffs seek punitive damages, calling the defendants’ actions “malicious, wanton and oppressive.”

Cross-examination of Kristin Hart and other witness testimony continues Thursday at the Robert V. Dellums Courthouse in Oakland.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988, or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). Visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources * for a list of additional resources.*